City employee benefits must change

Published 6:17 pm, Thursday, March 14, 2013

In a perfect world, if you put in your time risking your own neck to protect city residents from harm, you should be on easy street once that time is up. But the world is a lot less perfect than it used to be. No disrespect for the services and sacrifices of police officers and firefighters, but their retirement benefits must change -- just like those of all city employees.

That doesn't mean breaking past or existing obligations, but practices going forward must be different.

In current contract negotiations with the city's police and fire unions -- and the United Auto Workers union -- the city must insist on changes like those that have been agreed to by other unions.

New hires should not be entitled to supplemental Medicare coverage in retirement and should not be eligible for the city's defined benefit retirement plan. New retirement plans should be defined contribution plans, similar to private-sector 401(k) plans.

Converting new employees to a lower level of post-retirement benefits is now standard practice in municipalities across the nation. The cost of extending current benefits is becoming too expensive to handle, and Stamford is no different.

Pension and other retirement benefits ate up less than 1 percent of the city's budget in 2005. They are expected to consume 4.4 percent this year. The city's average pension allocations increased from $2.2 million in 2005 to $14.6 million in 2013. That rate of growth was driven by the recession, but nothing close to it can be allowed to continue.

While they are working, employees -- all of them -- must pay for more of their own benefits. Again, some unions in the city have begun doing so. For example, the 106 members of the Municipal Supervisory Employees Union, under their new contract, will see the share that they pay for their health plans grow by a modest 1 percent a year, eventually reaching 15 percent.

That's still a lot less than private-sector workers pay. The deal used to be that public-sector workers made much less than those in the private sector, so their benefits were greater. But as the pay gap closes, so must the benefits gap.